The `file' element

The `file element is composed of the following sub-elements:

• element `name': a character string used to build the file name.

• element `suffix': either true or false. When `suffix' is false (by default), the file name is composed only of element `name'; when it is true, the file name is composed of element `name' to which the PRISM suffix for dates is added. When the file is opened for writing, the suffix will be ``_out.$<$job_startdate$>$.nc'', where $<$job_startdate$>$ is the start date of the job. When the file is opened for reading, the suffix should be ``_in.$<$start_date$>$.nc'', where $<$start_date$>$ is the date of the first time stamp in that file. When reading an input from a file, the PSMILe will automatically match the requested date of the input with the appropiate file if it falls into the time interval covered by that file. The $<$job_startdate$>$ and $<$start_date$>$ must be written according to the ISO format yyyy-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS. The date/time string in the file name must have to format yyyy-mm-ddTHH.MM.SS since the colon is already used in other context for file systems. An example of an input file with `suffix' = false is SONSHLDO.nc available in oasis4/example/toyoa4/data).

• element `format': the format of the file; only NetCDF ( mpp_netcdf) supported for now.

• element `io_mode': either iosingle (by default) or distributed. The mode iosingle means that the whole file is written or read only by the master process; distributed means that each process writes or reads its part of the field to a different partial file. Note that if the PSMILe is linked against the parallel NetCDF library Li et al. (2003), the parallel mode will automatically be used; in this case each process writes its part of the field to one parallel file (see also our remarks about parallel NetCDF on page ).

• element `packing': packing mode , either 1, 2, 4 or 8 (for NetCDF format only)

• element `scaling': if present, the field read from the file are multiplied in the PSMILe by the `scaling' value (1.0 by default) (for NetCDF format only)

• element `adding': if present, the `adding' value (0.0 by default) is added to the field read from the file (for NetCDF format only)

• element `fill_value': on output, specifies the value given to grid points for which no meaningfull value was calculated; on input, specifies the value given in the file to undefined or missing data.